


I've Got You

by jjmash



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Stiles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Future Fic, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjmash/pseuds/jjmash
Summary: Stiles runs into Derek Hale in a bar ten years after leaving the McCall Pack and is surprised to find that Derek has managed to forge a pretty normal life for himself – something that Stiles himself is still searching for. When Stiles gets pulled back to Beacon Hills to help the pack he thought he'd left behind, he'll have to decide what he wants once and for all.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 7
Kudos: 96





	1. Seattle

**Author's Note:**

> We're playing it fast and loose with canon here, folks. Season six just sort of didn't happen in my mind? And the sheriff's name is John.
> 
> A brief note about the sexual content in this fic: there's nothing explicit, but there are a couple of very brief/tame "fade to black" scenes.

Stiles pushed open the heavy wood door of the hole-in-the-wall bar, pausing over the threshold to shake a few errant droplets of rain from his hair. When he had asked for a transfer to the Seattle field office, he’d been thinking about a lot of things – being closer to his dad, putting some distance between himself and everything that had happened in New York, advancing his career – but the constant rain that plagued the city for half the year wasn’t one of them.

The bar was warm, though, and an ideal refuge from the imminent storm outside. Ben from work was insistent that the Beacon had the best happy hour deals in the neighborhood, and Stiles was desperate enough for a place to drink away his worries that he was willing to overlook the depressing irony of the name.

Stiles fought through a throng of men in suits who were crowding the entryway and was halfway to the long mahogany bar when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He did his best to appear nonchalant as he hauled himself up onto a bar stool, carefully searching the dimly-lit room for the cause of his sudden discomfort. It looked like the standard crowd of after-work patrons, most people still in their business casual attire and huddled together as they gossiped over IPAs and half-price appetizers. But something had set off an alarm in the back of Stiles’ mind, and he’d learned the hard way not to ignore his gut instincts. 

Stiles’ eyes swept over the entire room twice before they caught on a familiar dark-haired man, and he had to grip the bar top to keep himself from toppling off his stool. Derek Hale was sitting at a tucked-away table in the corner, chatting with a group of young professionals and looking more at ease in a crisp button down and slacks than he ever had in Beacon Hills. If not for those unmistakable cheekbones and trademark eyebrows, Stiles might not have recognized him at all.

“What can I get for you?”

Stiles barely turned to face the bartender, his eyes still glued to Derek. “I’ll take a Johnny Walker Black, neat.”

He could tell the exact moment that Derek heard his voice. The werewolf broke off in the middle of a laugh and inclined his head slightly in a way that Stiles knew meant he was scenting the air, trying to parse through the mess of sweat and alcohol to hone in on a particular smell. Derek’s head swiveled toward him and their eyes locked; even from across the room, Stiles could make out the shock on the other man’s face. He forced himself to look away when the bartender set a tumbler full of whiskey down in front of him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, immediately raising the glass to his lips and finishing it off in two long gulps. “Can I get one more?”

The bartender gave him a slightly judgemental look but obligingly poured him another.

“Stiles.”

Derek was behind him suddenly, standing a little too close as he tried to squeeze around the other bar stools. Stiles nodded coolly, eyes focused on his drink. “Derek.”

“I–” Derek was cut off by the appearance of a beautiful blonde woman at his side.

“Robbie says this round’s on you, Der!” The woman’s wide smile faltered a little as she took in Stiles’ cold expression and Derek’s confused frown. “Oh sorry, am I interrupting?”

Derek responded without turning away from Stiles. “Michelle, this is Stiles Stilinski. We grew up in the same town.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow, a person from Derek’s mysterious past? You’ll have to join us so we can hear all about what Der was like as a kid!”

“No,” said Derek sharply, still staring hard at Stiles. Seeming to realize how harsh his tone was, Derek immediately stumbled to backtrack. “I mean, uh…”

“I actually have to get going,” Stiles said smoothly, rescuing Derek and himself from the awkwardness of the situation. 

“That’s too bad! We’re here every Friday happy hour if you ever want to share some embarrassing stories about baby Derek, we could definitely use the blackmail material.”

“Maybe,” Stiles mumbled, already waving over the bartender to close out his tab. 

Michelle tried to steer Derek back toward their table of coworkers but he shook her off gently. “Wait, Stiles.”

Stiles looked up from where he was signing his receipt. The werewolf rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Do you want to get some food or something? There’s a diner around the corner.”

Stiles stared at him for a long moment, contemplating the offer. He’d fully intended to go home, maybe watch some shitty reality TV, and pretend he’d never even met Derek Hale. But Derek was looking at him almost hopefully with those intense eyes of his – eyes that Stiles still sometimes dreamt about. 

“They’ve got curly fries,” Derek added, and that decided it; Stiles might be nearly thirty, but his love of curly fries would never die. So he waited while Derek grabbed his jacket and said his goodbyes, and then they were heading out into the quiet evening together. 

Derek led him to a bright, homey diner, exactly the kind of place that Stiles had loved when he was younger. They ordered milkshakes and burgers and Stiles tried to pretend that the whole situation wasn’t supremely weird. 

“How’s your dad?”

Stiles stirred his straw in his chocolate shake, not looking at Derek. “He’s good. Still in Beacon Hills, still the sheriff.”

“And how is–” Derek cleared his throat. “How’s Scott?”

Stiles shrugged. “Fine, last I heard. He took over Deaton’s vet practice awhile back and he’s getting married, apparently.”

Derek frowned and – yep, there was a glimpse of the surly werewolf that Stiles remembered from his high school days. “Do you not keep in touch?”

Stiles fiddled with his straw wrapper. “I don’t talk to the Beacon Hills pack much anymore.”

“What happened?”

Stiles looked up at Derek sharply. “Nothing happened. We grew up and I got the hell out.”

“Have you been in Seattle this whole time?” Derek asked, sounding almost regretful. 

“No. I was on the east coast for a while,” Stiles replied, his answer intentionally vague. “I got transferred here a few months ago.”

“For work?”

Stiles nodded. “FBI.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in law enforcement after–” Derek waved one hand in a sort of all-encompassing gesture, “–everything.”

“Didn’t know what else to do with myself,” Stiles said simply.

They were silent while they ate their food, and Stiles used the opportunity to study the man he hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. The old Derek was still there, lurking behind the business casual clothing, but it was obvious that he’d managed to achieve what Stiles never really had: a normal life, far removed from the supernatural mess of Beacon Hills. Stiles shoved down his instinctive jealousy and tried to be happy for the man – if anyone deserved a shot at a decent life, it was Derek Hale. 

“How long have you been in Seattle?” Stiles asked when they’d both cleared their plates. 

“Over five years, now. It’s been good.”

Stiles cocked his head to one side contemplatively. “Seems like you’ve figured your shit out.”

Derek stared back at him, his eyes impossibly deep. “I guess so, yeah.”

Stiles’ mind swam with the things he wanted to say to the man across from him: _I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to help you back then,_ or maybe _I’m sorry I showed up in your life again when you finally got away from Beacon Hills for good,_ or _do you know how much I missed you after you left?_

But Stiles didn’t say any of those things. He paid his half of the bill and trailed Derek back out to the sidewalk where they stood for a long moment, just looking at one another. 

“Well,” he finally said, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen between them. “I’m gonna head home. It was good to see you.” Stiles wondered if Derek could hear the lie in his heartbeat. 

“Good to see you,” Derek echoed. Stiles wondered if Derek was lying, too.

He’d already turned to leave when Derek spoke again, “I’d like–” he cut himself off, as if he was searching for the right words. “Will you take my number?”

Stiles stared at him in surprise, waiting a beat too long to respond. “Sure, yeah.”

They exchanged numbers before parting ways at last, and Stiles trudged home with a heavier weight in his chest than usual.

Stiles hadn’t been expecting Derek to actually do anything with his phone number – he honestly wasn’t sure if the idea of seeing the werewolf again thrilled or terrified him – so he nearly dropped his phone in shock when he got a text from him just a few days later.

_Do you want to grab dinner tomorrow night? I know a place._

Stiles’ fingers were typing out a “yes” before he’d even made a conscious decision. He spent the next day jittery and distracted for no discernible reason; his focus hadn’t been so shot since undergrad, back when he’d survived pretty much exclusively on Red Bull, pizza rolls, and Adderall. 

The address that Derek had texted to him belonged to a cozy bistro that was quiet yet busy enough on a weeknight to provide a sense of anonymity. Derek was dressed down this time, in dark wash jeans and a long-sleeve tee. Everything about him looked softer, somehow, than Stiles remembered.

“I see you’ve given up the whole biker gang aesthetic,” Stiles commented dryly after they’d been seated.

Derek shrugged. “It doesn’t really fit anymore, you know?”

Stiles did know – this new Derek looked like he’d be more at home in a cable-knit sweater than a leather jacket.

“So,” Derek said, just as Stiles was tucking into his frankly superb linguine. “Why move to Seattle?”

Stiles did his best not to grimace at the question, but he didn’t think he was very successful. “Just work stuff, and I wanted to be closer to my dad,” he said, trying for a casual tone. When it seemed like Derek was waiting for him to say something else, he added, “I was in New York, actually.”

“Laura and I were in New York for a few years,” Derek said conversationally, as if Stiles hadn’t been painfully aware of that fact every day that he spent in the city.

“I know.”

Derek put on a show of twirling his spaghetti around his fork, not looking at Stiles. “Just work stuff?”

Derek had never been one to pry – it was one of the things that Stiles used to find endearing about him, actually – so his obvious attempt to dig for information managed to startle Stiles into answering honestly.

“One of my team members died on a case.”

Derek still didn’t meet Stiles’ gaze, but his voice was sincere when he said, “I’m sorry.”

Lots of people had said that to Stiles after it happened. He’d never understood _why_ people said that when confronted with death – it hadn’t made sense to him when his mother died and it certainly hadn’t made sense when Sam was killed, especially since Stiles knew he was the one who should’ve been apologizing. But somehow coming from Derek, who was kind of a stranger but also not, it meant something.

“Yeah well, I should’ve known that getting out of Beacon Hills wouldn’t mean actually getting away from any of that shit.”

“I thought you worked for the FBI,” Derek said dubiously.

Stiles laughed bitterly. “You think the FBI doesn’t have people working supernatural cases?”

“I guess I never really thought about it.”

“Well it’s not like it did us a lot of good back in Beacon Hills.” 

Derek snorted in agreement. “So what, you’re like part of the ghostbusters?”

Stiles shook his head emphatically. “Nah, I stay the fuck away from those cases. We thought it was just a run-of-the-mill serial killer but it turned out to be a feral alpha who decided to take a chunk out of my rookie. That was a fun time, trying to explain to a 22 year old kid from the suburbs of Connecticut that he’d been bitten by a legit werewolf.”

“The bite didn’t take?” Derek asked, his expression pained. Stiles knew they were both remembering Jackson as a kanima.

“Oh, it took, it was just all fucked up. Still don’t know what went wrong, really, but Sam couldn’t shift like you guys after he was bit. He only turned on the full moon and he had no control; even mountain ash couldn’t hold him in the end. He’d go on a rampage and then wake up the next morning with no memory of any of it. It wasn’t until the bodies started showing up that we even realized what was happening.”

Derek leaned back in his seat. “Jesus,” he murmured. “Fucking hell, Stiles.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause before Derek spoke again. “So you moved to Seattle for a fresh start?”

Stiles considered it for a moment; it wasn’t really the full truth, but he supposed it wasn’t not the truth, either. “I guess, yeah.”

“Me too,” Derek said, smiling a little sadly at him. And hell if that didn’t twist something up in Stiles’ gut; Derek Hale, who Stiles had only ever seen express, like, a maximum of five human emotions, was looking all sympathetic and sad on his behalf.

“Did it work?” Stiles asked, and he couldn’t help the note of desperation that snuck into the question.

Derek stared back at him, his eyes glinting in the dim lighting. “I hope so.”

Stiles found himself getting together with Derek on a somewhat regular basis over the following months as they slowly began – or maybe just rekindled – a tentative friendship with rigid but unspoken boundaries: no dinner on weekends, no drinks after six, no talking about their shared past. Stiles heard all about Derek’s coworkers and the solitary hikes that he liked to take during his time off, and Stiles told Derek about his latest cases and shared innocuous anecdotes about his dad.

They were reaching the end of dinner one Thursday night – Thai food, because Stiles had a craving – when Derek invited him back to his apartment. Stiles thought about saying no, but couldn’t seem to form the words to decline. 

Not a half hour later, he found himself sitting on a beautiful dark leather couch in Derek’s surprisingly well-decorated apartment, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Seattle skyline while Derek grabbed them each a beer. They drank in silence for a while, and Stiles let himself sink into the comfort of the moment – Derek had become one of the few people in his life with whom silence didn’t feel awkward.

“Do you regret it?” The werewolf asked quietly when Stiles was nursing the dregs of his beer.

“What?”

“Leaving the pack,” Derek clarified.

Stiles thought for a moment, tracing the mouth of the beer bottle. “It was killing me,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t have made it much longer.”

Derek brought up a hand to cup Stiles’ face, his thumb stroking a soothing pattern along his jawline. Stiles leaned into the touch gladly, overwhelmed by the open sincerity that he saw in Derek’s eyes. “I’m glad you got out,” Derek said softly.

“I’m glad you got a chance to be happy,” Stiles whispered back, the sudden truth of it sinking deep into his bones.

And then they were kissing, a dry brush of lips that deepened into something desperate and wanting as they shifted closer together on the couch, hands grabbing at hair and clothing. Derek heaved Stiles up so that his legs were wrapped around the older man’s waist and carried him down the hall toward the bedroom, stopping on the way to press him into the wall and drop kisses all along his neck and jawline. Stiles huffed out a laugh while the werewolf sucked a bruise onto his skin. 

“I don’t remember getting pushed into walls by you being this hot when I was in high school,” he mused breathlessly. 

Derek nipped playfully at his neck in response. “Yeah, you do,” he said smugly.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “I mean, I was a teenage boy. Pretty much everything was a turn on back then.”

“And now?” Derek asked, grinding against Stiles with a torturously slow roll of hips.

“Yeah,” was all Stiles said, and then he recaptured Derek’s lips with his own in the culmination of over a decade’s worth of longing.

Later, splayed out on Derek’s soft bed with beads of sweat still clinging to his bare skin, Stiles let himself panic a little bit. He’d made a lot of bad decisions in his life – one night in college involving copious amounts of tequila and a karaoke bar sprung to mind – but having sex with Derek Hale probably took the cake.

He twisted in the sheets so that he could see Derek, who still had a blissful, fucked-out expression on his beautiful face. “I can’t date you,” Stiles said a little harshly, the older man turning his head to look at him in mild surprise. 

“You don’t have to,” Derek said simply. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t.”

Derek just nodded easily and stroked a hand down Stiles’ back, trailing his fingers along the scars that marred his skin.

“These are all since the Nogitsune?”

Stiles flinched at the name, but quickly stilled under Derek’s soothing touch. “Sometimes I still expect to see the scar from when I fell off my bike as a kid, or from that time Scott decided to climb a tree and I had to go up after him to get him down. But they’re not there, not on this body.”

Derek gently pressed a kiss to his shoulder blade, an unbearably tender gesture that Stiles never would have associated with the man before. “Beautiful,” he said.

“Then or now?”

“Both,” Derek said simply, like Stiles’ old body had been something worth coveting rather than a mess of awkward limbs and patchwork bruises. And fuck, Stiles was so _not_ the kind of person that cried after sex, but he felt tears stinging at the corners of his eyes anyway. He hauled himself up off the mattress before they could fall, hastily pulling on his clothes from where they’d been haphazardly discarded on the floor. Derek just watched him from the bed, unselfconscious in his nudity even when he followed Stiles to the door to see him out.

“Thanks,” Stiles mumbled, not really sure what he was grateful for. He was relieved when Derek didn’t try to kiss him goodbye, and he fled the apartment building with the beginnings of a massive headache.

Their dinners continued, sometimes with sex afterwards and sometimes not. Every once in a while, in the darkness of Derek’s bedroom when the world around them had gone hazy in the afterglow, they talked about Beacon Hills. It was mostly reminiscing about the more lighthearted threats they’d faced – the ones that hadn’t left any scars – and it felt almost cathartic to be able to talk about the things that had happened to them without getting bogged down in angst and regret.

The first time that Stiles stayed the night at Derek’s (completely unintentionally – he’d just been so exhausted from work that week, and Derek’s bed was so comfortable it should be illegal) he had a nightmare. It was a familiar one, where he watched Sam get clawed to shreds right in front of him, and then set on fire by the ghost of Kate Argent, and then drowned by a siren, and on and on until the full repertoire of monsters had made their appearance. And every time Stiles was left completely unable to move, forced to watch helplessly while the baby-faced rookie was killed in increasingly horrific ways.

Derek gently shook him awake and then pinned Stiles’ wrists to the mattress when he punched out instinctively.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Derek said soothingly, waiting until Stiles’ breathing had calmed to let him up.

“Sorry,” Stiles said groggily. He scrubbed a hand over his face and reached for his phone on the bedside table, then tumbled out of bed to get ready for the day.

“You can have the first shower if you want,” Derek offered, and Stiles took a brief moment to appreciate the sight of Derek tugging his sweatpants on over the swell of his perfectly-toned ass before trudging down the hall. 

Stiles emerged from the bathroom some twenty minutes later, hair dripping and wearing the same clothes from the day before, to find Derek flipping french toast at the stove while he sipped his coffee. It was uncomfortably domestic, and Stiles had to fight the urge to sprint out of the apartment as fast as his legs could carry him. He forced himself to take a few deep breaths and sit patiently at the kitchen table while Derek finished cooking.

“Do you have nightmares about Beacon Hills?” Derek asked, once they were both digging into the food.

“Mostly they’re about New York,” Stiles said, not bothering to fumble around for a lie.

“You can talk about it if you want,” Derek said, carefully avoiding Stiles’ eye.

Stiles laughed incredulously, and the corners of Derek’s mouth quirked up in a sheepish smile. “Yeah, yeah. I know I haven’t always been the best sharer.”

Stiles snorted. “That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking. “How’d you do it?” he asked finally. “How’d you get over it all?”

Derek shook his head. “I never got over it, I just got better at handling it. I actually talked to a therapist when I first moved here. I still have her number, if you want it.”

Stiles studied the werewolf, taking in the lightness of his expression. Derek would always be Derek, but he was no longer mired in guilt and grief the way he once was, and he was obviously better for it.

“Yeah, I’ll take the number,” he said, even though it felt like a surrender.

But then Derek rewarded him with a blindingly bright smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that was – there was simply no other word for it – adorable. “Okay, I’ll text it to you.”

It took a few weeks, but Stiles eventually worked up the courage to call the number that Derek had given him. It took two anxiety-induced hang-ups before Stiles actually managed to make an appointment, and a fifteen minute internal pep talk before he was able to push open the door to the therapist’s office. But once he made it inside, it really wasn’t too bad.

Okay, so it actually was pretty bad and talking about his innermost thoughts with a total stranger felt a bit like cutting open his stomach with a chainsaw and spilling his literal guts all over the floor, but Stiles left each session feeling slightly less like he was carrying a metric ton of shit on his shoulders. And when he casually mentioned to Derek that he’d started going to therapy, the look on the other man’s face made it almost worth it.

Contrary to what others may have thought, Stiles actually did have enough self awareness to realize that his feelings for Derek were slowly creeping beyond “just friends” territory. It was uncomfortably similar to the way he’d sometimes thought about Derek back in high school; the few times that teenage Stiles had let himself think about a future beyond the latest monster of the week, his daydreams had often included a strikingly familiar dark-haired man by his side. And just like when he was sixteen and having his first big crisis of sexuality, Stiles had absolutely no idea what to do about it. 

“Are we going to have to talk about this?” Stiles asked late one night, his head propped up on Derek’s naked chest while he traced abstract patterns onto the other man’s skin with his fingers. Derek’s grip in Stiles’ hair tightened briefly before he answered.

“About what?” he asked carefully.

Stiles motioned between them with his free hand, pointedly looking down at the pool of his cum that was slowly drying on Derek’s stomach. _“This._ The fact that I’ve been spending more nights here than at my own apartment.”

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

Stiles could practically see Derek shutting down, reverting back to that old closed-off version of himself that still resurfaced occasionally, and he prodded at Derek’s chest until the other man met his gaze.

“Hey, I didn’t mean I don’t want to be here. I mean, the sex is pretty okay,” he said teasingly, trying to ignore the way his heart swooped when he managed to coax a small smile out of Derek. “I’m just saying, I haven’t changed my mind about the whole dating thing. I don’t want either of us getting confused.”

Stiles waited through a moment of silence that stretched on forever; for all that Derek had changed, he still sometimes required an abnormally long time to process anything that ventured even remotely close to real human emotion. 

“I get it,” Derek finally said. “I know you’ve never seen me that way.”

Stiles balked, pushing up from the mattress so he could fully stare at Derek. “That’s why you think I won’t date you? Because I don’t ‘see you that way’?” he asked incredulously.

Dere gave a little self-conscious shrug. “I’m older than you, and I know I’m not the easiest person to be around. I don’t exactly have the best track record with relationships.”

“Dude,” Stiles gaped at him, temporarily shocked back into his sixteen-year-old vocabulary. “I don’t give a fuck about any of that. This is all me, okay? I…” he trailed off, trying to find the words that would make Derek understand. “I’m, like, super fucked up right now. I can’t date anyone until I get my shit sorted out. If it was five years ago or – hell, even if it was back when I was a dumb high school kid, I’d be practically jumping at the chance to be with you.”

Derek just gazed at him, uncertainty clear in his expression. “Don’t call me dude,” he said finally, startling a fit of laughter out of Stiles.

When he’d recovered himself enough to look back at Derek, the other man was watching him with a smile that turned soft and sweet as he ran a hand through Stiles’ hair. “You’re not fucked up,” he said sincerely. 

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, I kind of am. It’s okay though, it’s my turn to be the fucked up one.”

Derek pressed a kiss to his forehead that made Stiles’ stomach turn over in a not-at-all unpleasant way. “I’m here when you’re ready.”

The implication in Derek’s words had Stiles swallowing down a lump in his throat and pressing his face into the sheets to stop himself from doing something incredibly embarrassing, like sobbing pathetically or possibly grabbing hold of Derek and never letting go. He was pretty sure Derek could tell anyway, though, because he took one of Stiles’ hands in his and squeezed it gently. 

“I’ve got you,” he said quietly.

Nothing about his kind-of friendship with Derek changed in any tangible way, but Stiles felt lighter than he had in a long time. He settled into life in Seattle with surprising ease, and he even stopped complaining about the weather (most of the time – he was still a Californian at heart). He met up with Derek and his friends after work every Friday and provided them with what limited non-werewolf-related anecdotes he had about “baby Derek.” Things were going unusually well, so of course it all went to hell at the first opportunity.

“Hey Dad,” Stiles said tiredly, the overtime he’d been working catching up to him all at once as he sat down at his desk. He idly surveyed the mess of half-full coffee cups and scattered paperwork that he’d accumulated over the past week, wondering dimly if he’d have time for a quick nap before his next interrogation.

“Hi son,” John said from the other end of the phone, and Stiles instantly stiffened in his seat; that was his dad’s sheriff voice, the one he used when something bad was going down but he didn’t know how to say it.

“What’s happened?” Stiles demanded, his voice uncomfortably shrill in his own ears.

“Nothing,” his dad said hurriedly, but it did little to assuage Stiles’ sudden panic. “It’s just pack stuff.”

“Dad.”

There was an uncomfortably long pause. “We think it’s demons.”

_Well, fuck._


	2. Beacon Hills, Part 1

“I have to go back,” Stiles told Derek, pacing agitatedly around the living room. “My dad’s involved, I can’t not go.”

Derek watched him from his place on the couch, an unreadable expression on his face. “Do you want to go?”

Stiles grabbed at his hair and tugged, trying to ground himself in the light ache that it produced. “Of course I don’t want to go, I hate going back there.”

“Then don’t.”

Stiles ceased his pacing to glare at Derek. “Did you hear me? My _dad_ is there.”

“Your dad can handle himself, we both know that.”

Stiles shook his head angrily. “No he fucking can’t, he’s trying to take on literal fucking demons!”

Derek reclined back into the couch, the intensity of his gaze at odds with his relaxed posture. “He’s got a whole pack to back him up, Stiles. It’s not like he’s alone.”

“Are you saying they don’t need me?” Stiles challenged, his old high school insecurities resurfacing: _you’re useless, you’re weak, you’re_ human.

“I’m saying you don’t need to go back if you don’t want to, that’s all,” Derek said in an infuriatingly calm voice.

Stiles thought about it for a moment, the fight slowly draining out of him as he sat down heavily next to Derek. “I think I need to go back. It’s not...I know my dad will probably be fine,” he admitted, mumbling the words to the floor. “It’s like it keeps pulling me in.”

“It’s okay if you want to go, for your dad or for yourself,” Derek said quietly. “But I hope you come back.” The silent _to me_ at the end of Derek’s sentence hung in the air between them for a long time.

When they had sex later that night it was different; their touches lingered, devoid of any of their usual desperation and full of something far more tender and definitely more terrifying. It was almost like Derek was trying to find a way to slip beneath Stiles’ skin, and Stiles found that he wanted him to.

Derek drove him to the airport the next morning and Stiles tried to hold on to the ache in his body that Derek had left there. He was struck suddenly and painfully by the realization that he loved Derek – like really, genuinely loved him – and it made Stiles feel both impossibly small and infinitely large. 

There was no tearful goodbye at the security checkpoint. Derek just laid a hand on Stiles’ shoulder and left it there for a long minute, and then he took a step back to let Stiles go. They stood with what felt like an ocean of space between them for another moment, and Stiles was overcome by the urge to beg Derek to come with so that he wouldn’t have to face Beacon Hills alone. But Stiles knew that he couldn’t ask Derek to return to the place that had taken so much from him, and when he finally turned to leave he didn’t bother looking back.

John picked him up from the airport, immediately crushing him in a tight hug, and Stiles had missed the safety of his dad’s arms more than he’d wanted to admit. 

“I’m glad you’re here, kid.”

“Yeah,” Stiles nodded into his dad’s shirt. “Me too.”

They went straight to Deaton’s office – or Scott’s office now, Stiles supposed. He stared out the open passenger side window on the ride there and watched the familiar sights of his hometown flash past. Everything was more or less the same, but the closer Stiles looked the more changes he saw: the big tree in the town square had been replaced by a fountain, the little coffee shop near the station had rebranded, the episcopal church had a fresh coat of paint. 

But the vet’s office was exactly how he remembered it, like it had been stuck in time while the town around it grew and changed. Stiles had an intense sense of deja vu as his dad led the way to the back room – how many times had he come here to press Deaton for information or fret over a half-dead pack member?

Scott looked up when they entered, and Stiles was struck by how old his childhood best friend looked; Scott’s baby fat had disappeared and left behind the face of a man, and the alpha stood tall with an air of authority that he had only just begun to cultivate when Stiles left. But when Scott broke out into a smile and stepped forward to enfold Stiles in a hug, he was undeniably the boy that Stiles had grown up with.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, and Stiles could only nod. 

He looked around the room suspiciously, taking in the largely unfamiliar faces. Only a few members of the original pack remained, and he nodded at them in tacit acknowledgement. Scott made introductions for the other six werewolves in the room who didn’t know Stiles, and the lack of a certain strawberry-blonde spitfire was striking.

“Where’s Lydia?” Of everyone in the Beacon Hills pack, Lydia was the only one who Stiles had made a real effort to keep in touch with, and it was unsettling not to see her there.

“She’s back at my mom’s place,” Scott said. “Something about getting a head start on research.”

“I’ll go help,” Stiles asserted, already turning to leave when a high-pitched growl stopped him in his tracks. He looked at the wolf who had made the noise – a young, brown-haired woman with flashing gold beta eyes – and then at Scott, raising a single eyebrow in an excellent impression of Derek.

“Caroline,” the alpha warned, but it was more weary than angry, like a dad admonishing his troublemaking child.

“I’m just saying,” the beta mumbled to the floor, abashed. 

“Saying what?” Stiles snapped, already impatient to see Lydia and antsy about being in a room full of unfamiliar werewolves.

The beta glared at him, but she addressed her answer to Scott. “He’s not pack, why should we let him anywhere near the bestiary? Why is he even here?”

Stiles laughed harshly. “Are you fucking serious?”

A second beta stepped forward to snarl at him now, and Scott held up a placating hand. “Stand down, Jason. Caroline, I trust Stiles. He’s here to help us.”

“Plus,” Stiles said through gritted teeth, “I wrote the goddamn bestiary.” 

It didn’t surprise him at all that Scott had either forgotten or chosen not to mention Stiles’ contribution to the Beacon Hills pack, but it stung nonetheless. _It’s not like I practically killed myself for you or anything,_ Stiles thought bitterly.

His dad tossed him his car keys as he brushed past, giving him a sympathetic pat on the back on his way out.

It was depressingly easy to find his way to Scott’s old house, ingrained muscle memory taking over as soon as he slid behind the wheel of his dad’s cruiser. Stiles knocked lightly on the front door and then pushed it open without waiting for a response. Walking into the living room was like getting punched in the face, and he found himself standing stock-still in the entryway until a familiar voice broke him out of the memories that were threatening to overtake him.

“Finally,” Lydia snapped at him, not bothering to turn away from the laptop she was typing away on at the coffee table. “None of the baby betas are any good at research.”

Stiles walked around the couch and dropped a quick kiss to her cheek. “Good to see you, Lyds.”

A quick upturn of her lips was the only indication that she returned the sentiment.

“Where should I start?” Stiles asked, his grin growing in anticipation of a good old fashioned research binge.

The two of them quickly settled into a comfortable silence as they worked, interrupted only by the arrival of Melissa, who looked so pleased to see him that it made Stiles feel vaguely uncomfortable. The rest of the pack soon followed, forcing Lydia and Stiles to tidy away their books and papers to make room for the others. 

Stiles knew that Lydia wasn’t usually very active in the pack — she’d taken a professorship at MIT that took up the majority of her time and mostly kept her on the opposite side of the country — but she seemed to seamlessly integrate into the group nonetheless. Stiles, on the other hand, could only stand about half an hour of the easy banter before he had to flee to the kitchen. 

He was fidgeting with his phone and toying with the idea of texting Derek when Scott tracked him down, slumping heavily into the chair across from him at the kitchen table; it was the first time that night that Stiles had seen him relax back into a semblance of pre-alpha Scott.

“You okay?” the werewolf asked cautiously. 

“I’m fine.”

“C’mon,” Scott said, in a tone that was obviously meant to be teasing but came out a little strained. “I remember when you used to be the life of every party.”

“This doesn’t really feel like a party I was invited to,” Stiles retorted. 

Scott’s smile dropped off his face as they stared across the table at one another. “You could’ve been,” he said, and Stiles couldn’t tell if it was accusatory or just remorseful.

He was about to open his mouth to respond — whether to brush it off or to start a fight, he wasn’t sure — when a few of the younger betas tumbled into the kitchen noisily.

“Scott, can we order pizza?”

“And Chinese!”

“There’s a really good new Indian place—“

Stiles slipped quietly out the back door, dropping the car keys on the counter for his dad as he went. He started walking in the vague direction of his house, shoving his hands in his pockets to stave off some of the light evening chill. His fingers closed around his phone and he had pulled it out and was calling Derek before he could even think about it.

“Stiles.” 

The effect that Derek’s voice had on Stiles was instantaneous; he could feel some of the tension in his body unfurling just at the sound of his own name.

“Hey.”

“How’re things going there?”

Stiles exhaled shakily. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Tell me about your day?”

“Okay,” Derek said, and launched into an utterly unremarkable story about Marsha in Payroll. 

By the time he hung up with Derek, Stiles had already collapsed onto his old bed and was feeling markedly better than he had when he left Scott’s house.

Stiles slept fitfully despite his phone call with Derek, plagued by old nightmares that he hadn’t had in years, and finally gave up on sleep altogether just as the sun was breaking over the horizon. With nothing better to do, Stiles pulled out his old dry erase board and taped up most of their research from the previous day. He was in the process of writing out a few of their hypotheses when a voice startled him into dropping the marker. 

“God, it’s like high school all over again,” Lydia quipped, leaning casually against the door frame with a large to-go coffee cup in one of her perfectly-manicured hands. 

“Hey.”

Lydia didn’t change her relaxed stance, but her tone was considerably darker when she said, “You disappeared last night.”

Stiles winced a little at the accusation. “Yeah, sorry.”

“So are you going to explain to me why you spent the whole night looking at Scott like he stole your girlfriend?”

“You know you’re the only girl for me,” he teased, but the flattery only made Lydia glare at him harder.

“Stiles,” she warned.

He chewed on his bottom lip nervously; he knew it was a mistake to try to keep Lydia in the dark about his deteriorating friendship with Scott. He wasn’t officially part of the pack anymore, but Lydia had assumed that he and Scott still talked and Stiles hadn’t known how to correct her. 

“Um,” he stalled. “We haven’t really been keeping in touch.”

“Which means what, exactly?”

Stiles let his shoulders sag in defeat. “Last night was the first time I’d spoken to him in over a year, maybe?”

“A year?” The incredulity in Lydia’s voice was difficult to stomach. “How the hell did you go that long without talking?”

“I didn’t have anything to say to him, and apparently the feeling was mutual.”

“But this is you and _Scott._ You’ve been attached at the hip since we were all babies.”

“I know that,” he snapped, and then immediately softened under the somewhat hurt glare she threw at him. “I know,” he repeated, softer. “It’s not like we had a big fight or anything, we just don’t have anything in common anymore.”

“Stiles, I’m a theoretical physicist and you’re an FBI agent. The two of us have nothing in common.”

“Yeah, but you’re _Lydia Martin._ I could never leave you behind,” Stiles said, giving her a crooked little smile. Lydia still looked dubious, but she dropped the thread of conversation in favor of taking a long sip of her coffee. 

“What do we know?” she asked at length, motioning to his board. 

“It’s definitely demons. Like literal, from the fiery pits of hell à la Dante’s Inferno, demons. The stuff I found yesterday said they possess dead bodies but I’ve got no idea how or why. These ones – and I’m pretty sure there are at least two – seem to have escalated from mutilating animals to killing people.”

“At least we won’t have to worry about them possessing people who’re alive,” Lydia said grimly.

“Yeah, one possession was enough for me,” Stiles responded wryly, and Lydia winced in sympathy.

“So how do we get rid of them?”

“How’s your archaic Latin?”

Lydia grinned lethally in response. 

Stiles spent the next four days practicing drawing demon traps and eating meals with his dad at the station. He even attended a few pack dinners and movie nights, although sitting quietly and responding when spoken to was the extent of his participation. The newer pack members who’d growled at Stiles that first day remained wary of him, but a few of the others gradually began to accept his presence.

Being around the pack camaraderie and sense of family that Stiles used to crave made it too easy to remember all that he’d lost. He’d be sitting sandwiched between Liam and Lydia, watching the new betas bicker over the movie choice, and suddenly they’d be replaced by phantom images of all the people who should be there but weren’t: Erica, Boyd, Allison, Kira, Isaac — even Jackson and the twins, and Stiles hadn’t even particularly liked them. Stiles often caught Lydia looking over at him knowingly in those moments, like she understood exactly what he was thinking, but Scott seemed entirely unaffected. 

And Scott was, Stiles had to admit, a pretty good alpha. He seemed to genuinely care for his betas, both loving and authoritative in turns, and they respected and cared for him back. A very small but persistent part of Stiles was jealous; the betas received the understanding and recognition that Stiles had wanted but never really gotten from Scott, and it rubbed at him until his heart was raw and bleeding.

Derek picked up on Stiles’ steadily worsening mood annoyingly quickly for someone who wasn't even there. Considering how frequently and violently they had misunderstood one another back when they’d first met, it was surprising to Stiles how easily Derek seemed to understand him now.

“You’re upset,” Derek said on the other end of the phone, an assertion rather than a question.

Stiles slumped over in the driver’s seat of his dad’s car, staring unseeingly out the windshield at the patch of preserve where he’d parked. “I’m not upset.”

“You’re upset,” Derek repeated. “Why?”

“I don’t like being here.” _Without you,_ Stiles wanted to add.

There was a long silence, but Stiles was oddly content simply to listen to the light sound of Derek’s breathing. He closed his eyes and pretended that the other man was in the passenger seat next to him rather than a thousand miles away.

“When I left for college, it wasn’t really supposed to be a permanent thing, you know?” Stiles said when it became clear that Derek wasn’t going to speak again. “I thought I’d do my time on the East Coast and then come back to Beacon Hills and everything would be how it used to be.”

"And it wasn’t?” Derek prompted him.

“It wasn’t...not the same, I guess, but Scott didn’t really need me here anymore. And it felt like I was moving in slow motion all the time, like things were happening around me but they weren’t really happening _to_ me.”

“You were burnt out,” Derek said, gently but firmly. "You needed to leave."

Stiles rubbed at his eyes wearily. “I know. I know you’re right, I’m just second guessing myself because I’m spending so much time with the pack. It’s not a big deal, I’m fine.”

Derek made a dubious noise but let Stiles steer the conversation back to lighter territory.

When the doorbell rang late the next night, Stiles knew who it would be before he even opened the door. Derek was waiting on the front step like he’d just been passing through the neighborhood and decided to stop by for a chat. He was wearing his leather jacket like armor and Stiles kind of wanted to cry at the familiar sight of it.

“Looking good,” Stiles said, not bothering to ask what the hell he was doing in Beacon Hills at 10 pm on a Tuesday, and Derek frowned back at him in a way that made Stiles’ heart twist.

“Have you been sleeping?” he asked.

“Not well,” Stiles admitted tiredly as he stepped aside to let Derek into the house. They paused in the entryway while Derek ran his hands up Stiles’ jawline to sweep across his cheekbones, tracing the dark circles beneath his eyes.

“You’ve got to take care of yourself,” he said sternly.

“I’m not very good at that.”

“Try harder.” It was a succinct and harshly fond order, and such a typical _Derek_ response that Stiles actually laughed out loud. When Derek raised an eyebrow to convey how utterly dumb he thought Stiles was being, it made him laugh so hard he snorted. And then suddenly the laughter turned into something sharp and gasping that teetered on the edge of hysteria, and Stiles found himself struggling to breathe as a week’s worth of repressed emotion came tumbling out of him all at once.

Derek’s bemused frown quickly turned to concern as he helped Stiles sink down onto the floor, counting aloud to give Stiles something to match the stuttered rhythm of his breathing to. 

“I’m such a mess,” Stiles moaned into his hands once he’d regained control of his voice. 

Derek rubbed soothing circles into the small of his back. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said patiently.

“It’s just hard,” Stiles said, hoping he didn’t sound too whiny. “I keep remembering stuff, shit I haven’t even thought about in years. And everything is so weird with Scott and I have no idea what I’m doing here, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe it was a mistake to stay away for so long.”

Derek listened quietly while Stiles continued talking, going over every miserable moment of his time in Beacon Hills so far. 

“Let’s figure out the demon stuff first,” he said when Stiles finally tapered off into silence. “And we can deal with the rest of it later.”

Stiles physically sagged in relief at the calm authority in Derek’s voice, his skin prickling pleasantly at the other man’s use of ‘we.’ 

“Thank you,” he said, trying to pour every ounce of gratitude and affection he felt for Derek into those two little words. 

Derek helped him up off the floor. “I’ve got you,” he said, and Stiles smiled his first genuine smile in days at the deliberately familiar phrase.

When John arrived home from his shift some hours later, it was to find Derek and Stiles sprawled out across the sofa and watching an action movie in companionable silence. 

“Sir,” Derek nodded to Stiles’ dad politely.

“Good to see you, Derek,” John replied, seemingly unsurprised to see the former murder suspect sitting in his living room. The sheriff looked pointedly at Stiles and jerked his head toward the kitchen.

“What is Derek doing here?” John asked quietly once he’d closed the door behind them. 

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You know he can still hear you, right?”

John just stared at him silently, an interrogation tactic that Stiles remembered well from his teen years. He sighed and said, “Derek’s here to help.”

“And how did Derek know that we needed help?”

Stiles shrugged, trying to appear casual and hoping that Derek wasn’t listening in. “I called him.”

“I didn’t realize you two were in contact,” John said skeptically. 

“Derek lives in Seattle now, and we sort of ran into each other a few months ago.”

Stiles was relieved when his dad didn’t press any further, although there was some residual suspicion in his expression that was mildly concerning.

“Well, I suppose he can take the guest room,” John said, and Stiles clenched his jaw.

“He’ll stay in my room,” he said, making a split second decision that he hoped Derek would be okay with. He hated the idea of trying to sneak around his dad almost as much as he hated the idea of not sleeping next to Derek.

“Do you want the air mattress?” John asked.

“No,” Stiles said simply.

He could see realization dawn on his dad in real time, the barest hint of surprise flickering across his face before he managed to put on the practiced, carefully blank expression that Stiles had always privately referred to as his ‘sheriff mode.’

“Okay,” John said slowly, drawing out the word. “I feel like we should talk about that.”

“There’s not actually that much to talk about,” Stiles said, equally slowly.

“I’m pretty sure there is, son.”

Stiles stared down his dad until John finally gave a resigned sigh and leaned back against the kitchen counter in defeat. “Alright, I suppose we don’t have to talk about it right this second. Is there any dinner left?”

Stiles got his first solid sleep in a week that night, curled up into Derek’s side in his old bed that was far too small for the both of them.


End file.
